The megahealth in e1m1 respawns as well. I guess that's now a thing. I hope it's a bug and not intentional, as it reminds me of how Willits wrecked Doom 3 by putting too much ammo in the BFG edition.

e1m5 was fun. Some sharper-edged shadows are very noticeable in places, such as the "Q" secret. Cache mismatch textures are fixed. I was playing on Easy (what do you expect on a Switch?) so this was my first Shambler. I'm a hairy Shambler person rather than a muscly Shambler person, so I do need to get a closer look at the new model. 

The description also said Quake 64 is playable as well, how does one launch that one? 

In a tweet post (https://twitter.com/idtechpics/status/1428405642130345992) I saw it says that "Quake 64 will be available as a mod", so it might mean that Quake 64 is just not available yet. 

It's available under the "Add Ons" menu but you need a Bethesda.net account to access it. 

The PC port has some issues that will probably be resolved in future patches (just as the recent Doom re-releases had issues that were fixed), but I question the choice of netquake for the multiplayer. Even when they tweak it to the best of whatever is possible, it will still be vastly inferior to quakeworld network code.

Apparently some mods work with the new PC port as is, while many others don't? Will all mods that go beyond a pack of BSP files require Bethesda's approval?

The Switch port, meanwhile, is absolutely fantastic. Local DM4 botmatches on the go is something I didn't ever imagine getting. 

The maps load and run OK in a standard source port. They're BSP 29 and use community-derived features such as LIT files and fog and wateralpha from the worldspawn key.

I'm sure there are features that won't work, but for the most part there does indeed seem to be a high level of content compatibility. 

Wow, they've implemented Steam achievements. Guess I know what I'm doing this weekend. 

The new models are version 10 MD5s, i.e. Doom 3 format.

I haven't yet checked if the frame numbers are compatible with the originals, but it is indeed looking more and more like ID deliberately set this up to be hacked-on by the community. 

The rereleased game supports several languages now, so if you run, say, DOPA or MG1 episodes in Quakespasm or other engine, you would get for example "$qc_one_more" displayed instead of "Only 1 more to go..." - so it's displaying the localization strings, because it can't find 'em.

In DOPA or MG1 also if you trigger a secret, you get a crash. So while this stuff starts up and runs, it's not too playable.

Interesting to note that \steamapps\common\Quake\rerelease\id1\pak0.pak in the 'gfx' folder contains what apparently are original .wad files that id Software used. Same for SOA and DOE pak0.paks. Pretty cool! 

The engine seems to respect community developments from the last 20+ years. There is no attempt to lock out the modders. I might eat these words - but it seems to have been made by people who respect Quake and the community. 

I hope DM with crossplay takes off, I might finally be able to climb off the bottom of the scoreboard! 

Did Nightdive actually do this port or did they just license the Kex engine? Nightdive's Blood remake was only supported for a few months before they stopped working on it, leaving it with many unfixed bugs, especially in custom content.

I just hope they don't do the same thing here. I mean, I definitely don't expect them to patch it up to support AD or other mega-mods, but I hope it's not just left to wither on the vine after release.

Of course, there's no way we'll ever see the Kex engine code. That's Nightdive's cash cow and they're gonna keep milking Kaiser for all he's worth :D 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2580258215

The Q shadow near the teleport in E1M4 looks very sharp and anti-aliased. Sharper than any of the existing light tools could manage. Not sure how they're doing this. New lightmap format? 

Definitely a dynamic shadow. The player model casts a shadow here too.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2580266801 

n/t 

But it might actually support AD. I've heard 'partially support', I also heard one person on Twitch saying AD did work, I ran quoth successfully, the console gave a couple of weird warnings but seemed to handle it perfectly anyway. 

In terms of AD support, it probably can't handle any limits breaking maps, unless they created a new protocol and new bsp format (e.g. protocol 666/999 and bsp2.) 

Hey, so, some of those highres models seem very familiar, the dog and the grunt look a lot like the community-made dog and grunt models that I have installed already in my (non-steam) quake folder. I'd have to do a side-by-side comparison but is there any chance they actually licensed some of the community's work for those? 

It looks like they are using capnbubs' models (Player, Rottweiler, Grunt) plus his Ogre which he had never published before. They might have locked that guy in a dungeon for the last years to do all the models for this remaster, maybe that's why he vanished for so long. 

So when you ripping and converting the Ogre for AQM? :P 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33T7NPxnEKI 

Interesting for the AQM would be the Ogre, Vore, Zombie and rocket launcher. However, with the models having md5 format, it isn't clear whether it's even technically possible to convert them properly. Right now, it rather looks like the port could use more of our assets, considering ammo and health boxes haven't been touched at all, for whatever reason. 

The MVG video mentions new prediction code, so multiplayer is clearly not vanilla NetQuake. 

I don't know what they used, but it's definately not QuakeWorld and the code feels a shitty as NetQuake has always been, if not worse.

Another problem is lack of capability to run dedicated servers. The dedicated servers are all on Azure Playfab and only in Matchmaking, game browser is all P2P, no dedicated server binaries, no -dedicated switch on client... 

KEX has its ups and downs and has still way to go I think, but it is clear that MachineGames went all out with the new episode: unlike the classic one they produced for the 20th bday, it looks like they aimed for community-level content this time around. It is top-tier stuff and may hopefully serve as an entry-point for people out there who had no idea that their olde Quake was capable of looking that good and make them start looking for more quality content to play.